October 2018

October 31, 2018

While having just spotted the citizen in the West Village who always marches in the Halloween Parade as the guy from the movie The Birds who is being chased by a flock of black crows with explosive rage disorder, Haglund was somehow reminded that the Bolshoi in Cinema broadcast of La Sylphide will be on Sunday, November 11th at 12:55pm. It will be at all of the usual places in New York. From the promo it looks like the cast will include Daria Khokhlova and Artemy Belyakov. Look for tickets and cinemas here. [Edited 11/1 to call attention to Irina's comment below regarding the announced casting of Stashkevich and Chudin.]

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Only three weeks until the start of NYCB's Nutcracker Season and only a couple of weeks until the first casting is announced. Let's hope that some of our corps favorites are over their injuries and back on stage to dance along side the wonderful brand new soloists.

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And lastly, we're excitedly ticking off the nanoseconds until the Balanchine Celebration begins tonight at New York City Center. Hopping up & down excited, we are!

October 19, 2018

Two NYT stringers are wailing and moaning like scorned women who want attention and screaming how the world should be while possessing no facts, no evidence, no journalistic standard of justification, nothing of substantive weight to back up what they are saying. Nothing. In fact, they promote known falsehoods and stereotypes in order to further their theories.

Honestly, why don’t they focus on cleaning up their own house that includes critic Alastair Macaulay who was arrested and jailed for stalking little children on a beach with his camera. Oh, wait, he is finally being swept out the door. We’ll have to watch to see if this December he takes one last opportunity to textually luxuriate over the “warm bodies” of the little children in Nutcracker, perhaps with 100-letter words that we will be able to analyze for decades to come. If the two NYT stringers were to apply their arguments about the ballet culture to the NYT culture department, we’d be hearing how the whole staff is comprised of sexual deviants who prey on children. And then there is the NYT reporter Glenn Thrush, who admitted his sexual harassment and misconduct. What did the NYT do? Poo-pooed it all as insignificant and sent him off to sensitivity training. If these two stringers were to apply their arguments about the ballet culture to the NYT news staff, we’d be hearing how the NYT staff is inundated with sexual predators who are allowed by management to do what they want to women.

The NYT doesn’t much like the American judicial system when it inconveniently gets in the way of a good story – true story or not. So it tries to sweep it aside and hard-sell its own conclusions to the public. But let’s be clear, really clear: To date, no sexual harassment, abuse, or misconduct has been proven to have occurred at New York City Ballet or allowed/promoted by the NYCB culture. None by Peter Martins. None by Amar Ramasar. None by Zachary Catazaro. And none by Chase Finlay. No injury has been proven by anyone who has come forward with claims in the past year. NONE. Unfortunately, the NYT sees no money to be made in patiently waiting for NYCB and the American judicial system to work through the details to find a conclusion. Besides, it might not be the conclusion that will get the NYT the most clicks on its website. Therefore, the matter needs to be fueled and fanned by NYT stringers who unprofessionally and unethically portray all the accusations as being true when they have no facts, no evidence, no journalistic standard of justification, nothing of substantive weight to back up what they are saying.

There is no basis for attacking ballet culture. There is no basis for claiming that ballet directors are usually men, that women are routinely addressed as "girls" and that this is sure proof to support an assumption that the culture is unfair or dangerous to women. There is no basis for demanding that the ballet culture be changed. None at all. These two NYT stringers who are known for being woefully short on ballet knowledge, are even further short-changed on knowledge about how the world should be run – any part of the world, let alone a part with which they are wholly unfamiliar. Neither of them possesses credential .01 for saying how the ballet world should be run. Neither of them even has a full-time job at NYT.

Based on the information made available to the public thus far, the terminations of Amar Ramasar and Zachary Catazaro appear unjustified. Certainly there was no justification for NYCB making a huge public statement about the firings that smeared them to such an extent that it likely destroyed their livelihoods. Whether some NYCB dancers now claim that they would be uncomfortable working with Ramasar and Catazaro should have no bearing on whether the two dancers are reinstated with back pay. Every real world company that has adults working in it has people toiling together who don’t like one another, don’t trust one another, and wish they didn’t have to work with one another. NYCB’s uncomfortable dancers should grow up and take a cue from the real world.

NYCB has plenty of dancers who over the years have unsuccessfully romantically pursued Ramasar, Catazaro, and Finlay. One noisy feminist principal, who as a corps dancer reportedly snuck into the boys dorm at SAB to enjoy one of the male students, was simply banned from the dorm for life. If that happened today, the NYT might be claiming statutory rape and blaming it on the company culture. A NYCB dancer who allegedly had her own sexting-in-bed issues with Chase Finlay optionally chose to wail loudly and vaguely on Instagram and then rely on her friends and colleagues to disseminate the details to everyone around her. She, like Alexandra Waterbury, didn’t go to the police. Perhaps a police report would have prevented the incidents that Waterbury is alleging. Perhaps a police report by Waterbury might prevent future alleged victims. Are women really standing together on this issue of unwanted photography or is it business as usual?

And what about that NYT culture? When is it going to take the high road and get rid of its predators instead of wasting time wagging its tiny, tiny finger at NYCB?

October 18, 2018

The Koch Theater is reaching out in an effort to locate Hungarian Opera and Ballet ticket purchasers for whom the theater does not have an email address or any way in which to contact the buyers regarding the reduction in performances. If you know of anyone who might have purchased tickets for one of the affected dates (Wed 10/31 The Queen of Sheba, Sat 11/3 Mario the Musician/Bluebeard’s Castle 1pm, Tue 11/6 Swan Lake, Thursday 11/8 Swan Lake, Sat 11/10 Don Quixote 8pm, Sun 11/11 LOL 8pm), please encourage them to call the Koch Theater.

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While you're saving money this fall by avoiding ABT's dismal programing at the Koch, you should also probably avoid King Kong on Broadway. Haglund was there on the second night of previews. Kong finally appeared 45 minutes into the show. He was, indeed, magnificent. Really. However, he didn't make up for the unmemorable songs and lyrics by Marius de Vries and Eddie Perfect, the just plain awful book by Jack Thorne, or the obnoxious choreography by Drew McOnie who also directed the show. His choreography was the worst part of the show.

Like we said, Kong didn't show up for 45 minutes. Before that, the stage was filled with non-stop, noisy Newsies-like jumping around. The choreography was like the obnoxious loud-mouth guest at a party. So dreadful. How McOnie got such a positive reputation in the UK is a mystery.

However, Kong's creature designer Sonny Tilders, the aerial Movement Director Gavin Robins, the projection design team of Peter England and Artists in Motion have really outdone themselves. They totally brought back Haglund's epic childhood nightmares of King Kong living in the garage next door where he tended to get very angry at bad children. When Kong slowly walked right to the very edge of the stage and his big head leaned out into the audience, it set off atrial fibrillation alerts on several Apple watches. His racing through the streets of 1933 Manhattan received roaring applause from the audience.

This one may not last long on Broadway. Too bad, because the concept was filled with great possibilities.

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So when do you suppose ABT is going to fess up about having its spring Met season cut back by the Met? What, still no plans in place for the future? Why should anyone donate?

However, we are looking forward to the new production of Jane Eyre scheduled for the 2019 spring season. Cathy Marston made it for Northern Ballet (Leeds, England) in 2017. This looks like it could be a good vehicle for Gillian Murphy and Cory Stearns. Let's see what happens. Northern Ballet Theatre stages mostly complex story ballets (The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, Cinderella, Wuthering Heights) and is directed by David Nixon who is married to one of Haglund's favorite Kitris from the old days, Yoko Ichino. She is now NB's rehearsal director.

October 17, 2018

When you can dance for a quarter of century and finish your career in white tights performing in a technically exposing role like Theme and Variations in which you can still do a series of double tours with pirouettes straight down the white dotted vertical line on the stage floor while landing fifth after fifth after fifth position, you are either lucky or blessed or brilliant – more probably all three. My goodness, did Joaquin de Luz ever make us sorry to see him go on Sunday afternoon.

But what a celebration it was of fine dancing, of Spanish heritage, and of a dancer who literally went from one dream to the next dream when in 2003 he left ABT after dancing Puck in Ashton’s The Dream and stepped right into New York City Ballet's A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Oberon (following a compulsory debut in Nutcracker). Where will his dreams take him next? We don’t know. We had hoped to see him on stage in NY City Center’s A Chorus Line with perhaps Tiler Peck, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. However, there is the upcoming High Button Shoes that Jerome Robbins choreographed and will be presented in May by NY City Center Encores! He would be fabulous in that, just fabulous.

On Sunday, Theme and Variations looked in top form. In addition to Joaquin’s technical mastery and exemplary execution, there was Tiler Peck’s glorious musical phrasing and equal determination to be perfect. The demi-soloists and corps were in top form as well. Among them was Aaron Sanz, only hours before having been appointed a soloist, dancing with rocket boosters firing under him. The pride was close to chest-beating, “He & I – from Madrid!” The up and coming Spaniard might also one day knock our socks off in Theme and Variations. Let’s hope that he invests 30 seconds each and every day practicing that double tour/pirouette sequence so that he will be ready to carry the torch.

During the celebration at the end of the performance, out came a slew of colleagues and people who were important to Joaquin throughout his career including, of course, more Spaniards. Gonzalo Garcia ran out waving the red and yellow Bandera de España, and the two performed an impromptu bull fight with Joaquin as the matador and Gonzalo as the bull. Victor Ullate, Joaquin’s first director when he danced in Ullate’s company at the age of 16, arrived on stage with the vigor of a man decades younger. It doesn’t appear that many in the audience recognized him even though his very famous school produced Joaquin, Angel Corella, Tamara Rojo, Luciá Lacarra, and Carlos Lopez, the former ABT soloist who also arrived on stage to congratulate Joaquin. What a touch of class it was to invite orthopedic specialist Phillip Bauman (probably not a Spaniard except for perhaps on Sunday) to also appear on stage; where in the last decade would Joaquin’s career have abruptly ended without him? And finally Joaquin’s dancing mother arrived in the pink — literally. The two of them festively swirled around one another to the snapping of cameras from all sides. Such a joyous celebration.

We salute Joaquin de Luz – always one of our favorites for more than 20 years regardless on which side of Lincoln Center he danced. We look forward to what ever he dreams up next.

Since Angel Corella took the directorship of Pennsylvania Ballet five years ago, he has hurled huge challenge after huge challenge at the company. It has been startling to watch the Intel-like turbo-burst speed with which PA Ballet has processed everything that Angel has thrown its way. It has evolved into a national contender in the classics, in contemporary, and in its core Balanchine rep seemingly overnight. This is a good, good, good company that is filled with talent and ambition.

This week PA Ballet opened its fall season in its 55th year with the company premiere of Kenneth MacMillan’s masterpiece Romeo and Juliet, a ballet in which Corella was devastatingly brilliant during his career with American Ballet Theatre. His love for this ballet shone through every performer on the stage Thursday night at the company's premiere. The staging by Julie Lincoln and Robert Tewsley was filled with crisp musical and theatrical details (when have we ever seen the Capulet women pose so uniformly and severely bent at their waists – not in New York). The scenery and costumes were by Paul Anderson whose designs MacMillan commissioned when the Birmingham Royal Ballet mounted its own production of MacMillan’s ballet in 1992. The original 1966 designs were by Nicholas Georgiadis and are still used by ABT and the Royal Ballet. Anderson’s designs included Early Renaissance columns and statuary. When MacMillan saw the new scenery on stage, he then changed some of the choreography to better adapt to it. So, the dancing sometimes looked a little different than what we are accustomed to seeing in New York. By the way, the ballerina who led the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s premiere performance in 1992 was Nina Ananiashvili.

A major difference between the Georgiadis and Anderson designs is the apparel for the Mandolin Dancers. Georgiadis costumed the men in salmon pink tights and strange little hats. The Anderson version is difficult to describe; so we’ll just dig out a photo (by Photo Roy Smiljanic) of the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Lead Mandolin Dancer and his colorful streamers:

There were six of these guys on Thursday night including Peter Weil as the Lead Mandolin Dancer. By the time Weil finished dancing with his group, he had taken over our attention so completely that we thought that this ballet was about the Mandolin Dancers. In addition to Lead Mandolin Dancer, Weil will perform the role of Mercutio which we intend to see next week. We have raved about this dancer previously. He’s got charisma and electricity on the level of a young Corella. He also has squeaky clean technique and moves like lightning. Some readers may recall that when Corella first joined ABT in 1995, one of his early roles during that first Met Season was the lead Mandolin Dancer in Romeo and Juliet. Just sayin’ … Keep both eyes on this guy.

Sterling Baca and Lillian DiPiazza were captivating as Romeo and Juliet. The honesty in their portrayals made us believers, and their “deaths” hit us hard in the gut. As Juliet, DiPiazza spoke with soft supple feet, liquid port de bras, deeply arched arabesques, and a natural acting style that made us hear Shakespeare’s words. We fully felt her turmoil as she leaned against her bed motionlessly during Act III and contemplated her dilemma. By the way, the lighting design for this scene was brilliantly conceived by Brad Fields to show Juliet’s world turning dark around her stillness.

Any concerns that we may have had about whether the young Baca would be victorious over the impossibly difficult choreography in the balcony pas de deux were allayed at that first renversé into arabesque which began his first variation. Baca whipped it and then took off around the stage with force and energy that we had not seen from him before. This was a breakthrough performance for him in that he found a way to break free from Sterling to become his stage character. The very difficult partnering and lifts were seemingly done with ease. The "corpse pas de deux" was a realistic look at Romeo's desperation.

Ian Hussey was a fierce, menacing Tybalt. Mercutio and Benvolio were danced by Albert Gordon and Jack Sprance. Their trio dancing with Baca was clean and energetic. Pau Pujol probably never thought that his apprenticeship at PA Ballet would deliver a role like Paris to him. Despite his obvious youth, he managed the stifling sternness of the character along with some very fine partnering of DiPiazza’s Juliet.

Charles Askegard made Lord Capulet into a major figure on the stage throughout the evening. It has been so nice to see him evolve into such a fine and complete character actor since joining PA Ballet’s artistic staff.

The entire cast fully lived this Romeo and Juliet. No one was just standing around like they were filler. At any moment it was possible to pick out any performer in the background and see that he or she was actively involved in a side story or in a reaction to what was happening at center stage. Such a handsome production and a stunning achievement by PA Ballet.

The Orchestra of Pennsylvania Ballet under the direction of Beatrice Jona Affron, who is celebrating her 25th year as its conductor, played beautifully and with energetic spirit throughout the evening.

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a complexly designed jewel of a stiletto from Jimmy Choo, is bestowed upon Lillian DiPiazza for her honest, heartbreaking portrayal of Juliet.

October 13, 2018

Interim leader Jon Stafford announced this afternoon that Joseph Gordon has been promoted to principal dancer and that Daniel Applebaum, Harrison Coll, Claire Kretzschmar, Aaron Sanz, Sebastian Villarini-Velez and Peter Walker have been promoted to soloists. All excellent choices. We love all of these dancers. Every one of them delivers 1000% when they hit the stage. Congratulations to all!

Now – could we please see about getting our other favorite ballerinas in the corps off the disabled list and back on track? We old folks don't have a whole lotta time to waste while these ballerinas dilly-dally around in ortho boots and the like. Let's go let's go let's go. On stage.

And could NYCB just name Stafford permanently to his post so the obnoxious media can find something new to obsess over – like the game-changing importance of Taylor Swift's and Kanye West's political endorsements and, of course, the hidden message in each item of Melania's wardrobe.

October 12, 2018

More on this tomorrow, but just a brief note to say that last evening's Romeo and Juliet with Sterling Baca and Lillian Di Piazza was one of the most honest, fully danced, fully lived performances that we've seen in quite some time. New Yorkers should make a bee-line to Philly for one of the evenings or matinees. There is even a specially priced 11:00 AM performance next Friday. Tickets here.

October 11, 2018

New York City Ballet returned to “big house ballet” on Wednesday evening. The large (paying) crowd was enthusiastic about the program’s three masterpieces: Balanchine’s Prodigal Son sandwiched between Robbins’ Fancy Free and West Side Story Suite.

Fancy Free, which was originally made for American Ballet Theatre in 1944 and first danced by NYCB in 1980, is one of the few ballets that ABT and NYCB share regularly, and it is always interesting to watch the companies’ collective casts to see which company currently fields the strongest performances. Opinions goes back and forth with, perhaps, a consensus being that a contemporary high bar was set by Carreno, Corella, and Stiefel at ABT a long, long time ago. These days, the scales tend to tip in favor of NYCB. Last spring its newly minted cast of Roman Mejia, Harrison Coll, and Sebastian Villarini-Velez knocked our white Dixie cup hats off. Villarini-Velez, who is riding atop a huge wave of successes this season, stepped into last night’s performance as a substitute for Sean Suozzi. He along with Daniel Ulbricht, Joseph Gordon, Mary Elizabeth Sell, Sterling Hyltin, Miriam Miller, and Giovanni Villalobos delivered the heat of a summer night in New York and the charm of unsophisticated sailors meeting up with the experienced city girls for a night on the town and a little bit of fun as a distraction from the uncertainty of the future. Terrific performances from one and all.

Saturday evening Joaquin de Luz will dance in Fancy Free for the last time on the eve before his retirement. Joaquin is among a small handful of artists who danced in Fancy Free as a member of both ABT and NYCB. Robert LaFosse and Mikhail Baryshnikov are the only other ones that come to mind although dancers have guested on occasion – Marcelo Gomes made an appearance in NYCB’s Fancy Free ten years ago and there have been collaborations among artists of both companies at festivals and on small tours. Saturday night is not to be missed.

In last evening’s performance, Joaquin and Maria Kowroski, with 84 years between them, burned through the 89-year-old Prodigal Son with the glow of blue flames. This was a towering performance from both artists. Maria, in top slinking predator form, chased after Joaquin’s Son like a python chasing after prey, eventually wrapping herself around him with a python’s smothering satisfaction. Joaquin’s Son – wayward, privileged, petulant, impertinent – was asking for trouble from the outset. He found plenty of it in Maria’s Siren whose control over her trailing red cape symbolized her complete control over her realm of grotesque little beings and the debauchery that the Son aspired to experience. Joaquin’s Son’s repentance and the slow, painful walk on his knees toward his father, portrayed perfectly by Ask la Cour, revealed a vulnerability and desperation not present in any other roles danced by him during his long, storied career. What a pity we could not have seen him as Albrecht.

West Side Story Suite closed out the evening with such powerful dancing that it looked like a do-or-die audition for many of the performers. How many of them will show up in Spielberg’s remake of the movie which was originally choreographed/directed by Jerome Robbins? Georgina Pazcoguin, certainly. She’s been dancing the role of Anita for ten years. It’s hers. She owns it. There’s no one better. Everyone in the cast seems to have been working on their singing since last time. They should keep working - every day. It was much improved, but not good enough for the movies. Peter Walker, another corpsman who has bolted to the forefront and is now someone who we look for in the castings, performed the role of Tony. There’s lots of depth and color to whatever he puts on stage. Justin Peck as Bernardo, a mostly walking around role: No, just no. His stage days were over before they ever got past meh. Andrew Veyette is past his Leader of the Jets years. He has been minimally convincing in the past, but no longer. Brittany Pollack made a sparkling debut in the singing/dancing role of Rosalia, and Mimi Staker met the typecasting requirements for Maria and danced charmingly. We need to see more of her in some taxing pointe roles. It was encouraging to see Ashley Hod back in the lineup. She has been missed during her very long injury rehab.

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a diamond encrusted gold stiletto which was introduced in Dubai last month as costing $17 million for the pair, is bestowed upon Joaquin de Luz and Maria Kowroski for their pure gold performances in Prodigal Son: